I’d like to voice one of my concerns with the upcoming arena system as it pertains to my lock. My understanding is that the arena system is a lot more focused on winning as opposed to just farming as it is now. As a result people are going to throw every cooldown and ability (under 15 minutes if I’m to understand correctly) they have into the fight.

Warlocks currently are a *very* powerful dueling class, simply because there is so much that they can do to stack a match ahead of time (such as picking the right pet for the fight), all at the cost of soul shards. I know for myself, that in desire to win, I’m going to be doing everything I possibly can to bias matches in my favor and I don’t believe I’m alone in this. I’ve seen videos of server 2 on 2 tournaments where people would use everything they could including flasks and arcane bombs to achieve victory. I think the decision to disallow consumables was a brilliant decision simply because of this reason.

From a warlock and balance perspective, I’m just worried that I’m going to be stuck farming up to 5-9 shards for every single match. (2 Healthstones, 1 Spellstone (for at least 2/3rds the matchs), 1 Pet (if Fel Domination isn’t allowed and another 1 if it is), Soulfire if CC can buy the time, a Shadowburn every 15 seconds if I’m not saving it for a spike.) See… if people *can* do it, then they will. And if people *are* doing it, then Blizzard is going to have to balance around it otherwise they will face a situation with locks taking up a very disproportionate amount of top arena teams. I can see a couple ways of doing this, either nerfing locks so that even with all their shard use they are on par with other classes, or making it so there isn’t time to summon that much stuff prior to a match but leaving walocks gimped without the use of quite a few of their abilities, or cutting out the cost of shards in an arena but lowering the power of those abilities. Either way I’m not liking the choices I see.

Yes, I know rogues face something similar with Fadeleaf.

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Personally, my suggestion would be to make it so that instead of competing against *everyone* on a ladder, you are only competing on separate ladders against other members of the same side and class. If Paladins become the bomb in 2 on 2 pvp and tend to win a disproportionate amount of matches, its ok because as a gimped warrior (just picked a name, not saying it’s the case) you would only be competing against other teams that have the same ‘handicap’. Is it an optimal solution… probably not, but it does adjust some for inevitable class imbalances that are going to happen. I’d still be farming shards, but at least I get something out of the deal (the fake pride in winning more and the ability to use a lot of my abilities, even if I’m still on the same place on a ladder relative to my skill). Even though I'm writing this a lock's perspective the same thing can be said of other classes that become more / less powerful then average based on what the standard teams become.

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I’m sure there are a lot of problems with this, mostly the fact that it doesn’t include the relative power of your partner into the equation so Class X Player A teamed with Class Uber would be higher on average then Class X Player B teamed with Class Gimp. Is complete class balance the best choice? Obviously. However in a game this complex that’s impossible to do completely.

Any thoughts?

There has been a 'lock ability leaked in the giant FoH post that summons a soulwell every hour. Until any information to the contrary, it may be logical to assume that it functions pretty much exactly how it sounds.

It may also be logical to assume that any speculation on TBC arena matchups based on non-TBC mechanics is, in fact, illogical.

Not really related to soul shards but more to arena balance. Just read this from official forums:

Drysc:
The match making of the areans interest me, I thought they were going down the Warcraft 3 model with matches based on the ranking of the group at least for the areanas, but for battlegrounds is there there is some sort of assesment of items involved?. Raises some obvious questions:

- What do you base it on? iLvl?
- Is it useing an addition, average, median method?
- Does backpack or bank count?
- Would it use average across the group/raid?

Seems like it leaves a lot more room for exploits, and I'm hoping the match making is based on the pure rankings method. Answers/opinions?

I think a clever system would be where the lock is given X number of soul shards per battle, and maybe can get more via killing the enemy but overall is fairly limited. If you had to start a fight with 3 soul shards, would you spend one on a spell stone? or a health stone? save it for the shadowburn killing blows for that final burst?

It seems a lot more tactical to me, but then of course the technical limitations of bag space are going to be a nightmare.

Juju necromancy. Check my post date.

ignore

The idea of a certain amount of soulshards per arena game sounds extremely nice, I think a decent limit (Considering the apparant length of matches) would be around 20, which would allow for a decent amount of healthstones, Shadow Burns, and Pet Summoning.

If they however expect us to grind in between every few games in order to attain soul shards, at least put fucking mobs with a high level near the arena entrances so I don't have to travel some place and spend 15 minutes farming so I can use my class to it's full potentntial.

As for Warlock balance in the arenas, there are now MS / Deathwish Warriors, so there are bigger problems for Blizzard to face :P

You have the most powerful pvp class in the game and you're complaining about farming...

We're also the only class in the game that is forced to farm in order to operate to it's max potential, where as the others can just buy whatever they need to operate to their max potential (I know you need money, but that can be attained without having to go out of your way and earn it :P)

What kind of childish argument is this? Soul shards are still a shitty mechanic even if the class in question is better than others in a specific part of the game.

How many matches will the top ranked teams play per week, 20?